'Legalize heroin & cocaine': World leaders call for end to War on Drugs

A panel of top global narcotics experts fronted by prominent public figures including Kofi Annan, Richard Branson and eight ex-national presidents, is strongly urging that drugs be a matter for health professionals, not the police, in a new report.

“Overwhelming evidence points to not just the failure of the
drug control regime to attain its stated goals but also the
horrific unintended consequences of punitive and prohibitionist
laws and policies,” states the study, published by the Global Commission on Drug Policy
(GCDP) this week.
“A new and improved global drug control regime is needed that
better protects the health and safety of individuals and
communities around the world,” the report says. “Harsh
measures grounded in repressive ideologies must be replaced by
more humane and effective policies shaped by scientific evidence,
public health principles and human rights standards.”

There have been previous groups that have advocated radical
reform, and drugs panels that have been staffed with respected
and sober politicians, but never have the two been combined to
produce a body with such clout. Among its board members are the
ex-presidents of Brazil, Chile, Switzerland, Mexico, Poland,
Portugal and Colombia, some of the countries with the most acute
drug problems in the world.

As a sign of its stature, the GCDP leadership met with UN General
Secretary Ban Ki-moon on Tuesday, in the hope of swaying the
current UN chief ahead of the 2016 UN session on drugs. The
conference will direct global policy for the next decade and the
GCDP hopes that it will radically alter the “dated rhetoric
and unrealistic goals” of the previous session in 1998.

The GCDP’s report enlists a litany of statistics in aid of this
cause.

The UN estimates that the number of drug users rose 18 percent
from 203 million to 243 million between 2008 and 2012. In the
past three decades, opium production has risen almost fourfold.

“The facts speak for themselves. It is time to change
course,” said former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan.
“We need drug policies informed by evidence of what actually
works.”

The side effects of drug prohibition is a “thread” that
runs through all of public life, the group says.

“Punitive drug law enforcement fuels crime and maximizes the
health risks associated with drug use, especially among the most
vulnerable,” say the authors, citing the studies that show –
among other grim findings – that almost four in 10 Russian heroin
users are HIV-positive.

“Criminal drug producers and traffickers thrive in fragile,
conflict-affected and underdeveloped regions, where vulnerable
populations are easily exploited. The corruption, violence and
instability generated by unregulated drug markets are widely
recognized as a threat to both security and development,”
says the GCDP report.

The Mexican government’s war against the cartels that control the
lucrative drug routes to the US has resulted in more than 120,000
deaths in less than a decade, while drugs have also played a key
role in conflicts in Colombia and Afghanistan.

The GCDP’s recommendations for solving this are bold: governments
must ensure that citizens inflict as little harm upon themselves
while using drugs; no users should ever be arrested for
possession; and the government must itself control the drug
market.

"Decriminalization of drug consumption is certainly crucial
but not sufficient. Significant legal and institutional reforms,
both at the national and international levels, are needed to
allow governments and societies to put in place policies to
regulate the supply of drugs with rigorous medical criteria, if
the engines of organized crime profiting from drug traffic are to
be truly dismantled," said former Mexican President Ernesto
Zedillo.
“Ultimately, the global drug control regime must be reformed to
permit legal regulation,” said Fernando Henrique Cardoso,
the former President of Brazil. “Let’s start by treating drug
addiction as a health issue – rather than as a crime – and by
reducing drug demand through proven educational initiatives. But
let’s also allow and encourage countries to carefully test models
of responsible legal regulation as a means to undermine the power
of organized crime, which thrives on illicit drug
trafficking.”

In essence, the vision of the recreational drug industry painted
here is similar to the government-regulated cannabis sale points
that were pioneered in the modern era by the Netherlands, and
have recently been taken up in Uruguay and several states in the
US.

This civilized version of the drug trade, accompanied by
extensive medical facilities and rehabilitation programs, seems
infinitely more desirable than the wars over opium fields in
Afghanistan, or Colombian jungle raids.

Yet it is unclear if members of the UN will believe that this
vision can be scaled up to other, more dangerous drugs, such as
heroin, although the authors do say that they believe crack
cocaine, and Russian-invented necrosis-causing drug Krokodil
should be banned from sale. It is also less obvious if the model
of drug supply in affluent Western societies leads to the same
social consequences if transposed to poorer, underdeveloped
regions such as rural India or China.